Basho dates his departure at the twenty-seventh day of the Third Month. There are several questions about this. This date corresponds to the date of May 16 in the Western calendar. Ordinarily the lunar calendar and the Western calendar are about a month apart in their dates, but in 1689 there was an intercalary month which made the gap wider than usual. In the following notes the dates Basho gives will be indicated as 3.27 to mean the twenty-seventh day of the Third Month and this will be followed in parentheses by (5.16) to mean the sixteenth day of the fifth month which is the corresponding date in the Western calendar.

Basho's companion Sora kept a diary which is considered far more accurate in terms of factual details than Basho's literary account, and it provides a useful perspective on what Basho has created. Sora's diary says they departed on the twentieth of the Third Month. An account by another of Basho's disciples says they left Fuakagawa on the 20th and stayed at Senju from the 20th to the 26th. Evidently the travellers spent a week in Senju with friends writing poetry and saying their last farewells. Basho may simply have confused the day he left Edo and the day he left Senju. On the other hand, this date may be an allusion to The Tale of Genji where in the Suma station Genji is sent into exile and we are told that he departed the capital sometime after the twentieth of the Third Month.

When Basho writes "There was darkness lingering in the sky, and the moon was still visible, though gradually thinning away," he is quoting directly from The Tale of Genji. In the Suma station we have "The moon still bright in the dawn sky added to the beauty of the morning." The reference is to Genji's single night with a married woman and expresses his regret that they will not be able to meet again or even exchange notes. The passage continues, "The sky, without heart itself, can at these times be friendly or sad, as the beholder sees it. Genji was in anguish. He knew that there would be no way even to exchange notes. He cast many a backward glance as he left." (Vol. I, p. 45, Seidensticker trans.) The passage from the Genji works on the tension between the bewitching moonlit scene and the heartbreak of separation. This is exactly the mood Basho wants to capture as he sets out on his journey. Basho is looking across the great Sumida River at the delicate clouds of cherry blossoms with massive Mount Fuji in the background.

Ueno and Yanaka are places in Edo that were particularly famous for the beauty of their cherry blossoms. Basho may also have chosen to mention Ueno since it was named after Iga Ueno, Basho's hometown. Now that he is setting off on a journey from which he may not return, he is thinking of his home, not just the one he is leaving at Fukagawa, but his birthplace as well.

This whole passage may well have been made up by Basho. Much discussion has focused on whether or not cherry blossoms would actually have been blooming so late in the year. Some say cherries were there, but were past their prime, others have suggested that perhaps late cherries were still in bloom. Just as it is unlikely that he could actually see Mount Fuji in the darkness, so too, he may only have seen the cherry blossoms in his imagination. But throughout the diary Basho's interest is not so much with the facts of the situation as with the truth of the situation, and in this case the truth lies in the feelings he experienced as he set out. When Basho says the cherry blossoms "were bidding me a last farewell," he is wondering whether or not he will survive to see them again. He is also quoting a poem by Saigyo. When Saigyo was setting out from the capital on a journey to Shikoku, he visited the Kamo Shrine and wrote a poem asking when and if he would see the cherries again.

Basho is filled with excitement as he is accompanied by his friends on the first stage of his journey, but this excitement is balanced by his misgivings about the distance ahead of him. The figure three thousand miles (ri) is a conceit often found in Chinese and Japanese literature to indicate a long journey; it is not to be taken literally. At the thought of finally parting from his friends, Basho is overcome with emotion. When Basho says that the faces of his friends could only be seen as a vision, he is invoking the Buddhist philosophy that the world itself is only a dream, and even this journey which is so daunting a prospect is nothing more substantial than a dream as is his grief at parting from his friends. He expresses his anxiety and sadness, then dismisses these as being merely worldly concerns and this prepares us for the humor of the poem that follows. At the same time, the world may be but a dream, yet the feelings of anxiety about the trip and the grief about parting from friends is real.

In the poem the notion of tears in fishes' eyes is a humorous one. The idea may have come from the fact that Senju was the site of a large fish market and Basho felt sympathy for all those stalls of fish out of water. At another level, however, the poem is a lament for the passing of spring as well as a lament for the parting of friends. Just as the fish are in a very different environment from the birds, so too will Basho be in a very different environment from his friends he leaves behind, and yet they are joined by their shared grief. Having his friends and disciples come to see him off was both a festive and a sad occasion. We see here that Basho is full of contradictions. He is moved to tears as he parts from his disciples, but his Buddhist philosophy demands that he remain aloof from worldly ties and passions. The tension is between what he knows in his mind and what he feels in his heart. As a poet Basho is willing to embrace the feelings of his heart.